"That was really important," Maurus said. "Without that evidence, this would have been a very different case. There are many, many cases that don't have so much video evidence to challenge the police version of events, but in this case, we did."

For Premo, being found innocent affirms something even more fundamental:

"The biggest thing for me coming out of this," he told the Voice, "is not being discouraged by the attempts of New York City to quell dissent and prevent us from expressing our constitutional rights."

On Twitter and Facebook, Premo celebrated his not-guilty verdict by quoting the lawyer Elizabeth FInk: "There is no justice in the American justice system, but you can sometimes find it in a jury."

by Anonymous

reply 13

03/03/2013

Occupy was misguided in many ways, but the government were total dicks about it.

by Anonymous

reply 1

03/01/2013

W00T! I'm totally behind Occupy!

by Anonymous

reply 2

03/01/2013

Disgusting the way Occupy Wall Street was persecuted. I'm glad the police were caught lying.

by Anonymous

reply 3

03/02/2013

excellent trap!

by Anonymous

reply 4

03/02/2013

Never trust the cops.

by Anonymous

reply 5

03/02/2013

Yet the cops will not be charged with perjury.

Great

Fucking lying piles of shit

by Anonymous

reply 6

03/02/2013

Look into the Tyson Heder case in L.A. The city attorney, Carmen Trutanich, has a scheme where he cites arrest and conviction rates as a reason to re-elect him. So, he gets the cops to keep falsifying charges in order to maintain such a winning record. If say the defendant won't plea then Trutanich has a set up where he terrorizes them into accepting a plea.He even has a special courthoue ready if they won't plea after a year. The courthouse is Division 95 and there a judge is on the take and will get any defendant who refuses to plea after a year comitted to mental institutions. A trial gets averted and if the person gets free and sues than they can pretend that the person is so cuckoo that they were found incompetent to stand trial. Sometimes the cops get caught but mostly they don't. The prosecutor in the Tyson Heder case is a failed private attorney and general evil nutjob called Jennifer Waxler. She is the go to girl for prosecuting the innocent.

by Anonymous

reply 7

03/02/2013

Juries do not find people innocent. That is not one of the options. They find people guilty or not guilty. Proof of innocence would be just about impossible.

by Anonymous

reply 8

03/02/2013

I can't beleve they deliberated for hours. The DA/cops must have had some plants in the jury.

by Anonymous

reply 9

03/02/2013

r9, they either have plants or the prosecutor manages to pick a jury full of imbeciles that will never believe that cops lie, no matter what. Happens all the time. Then, when the falsely accused sues they can't win due to it being impossible to point at "innocence." The system is sicker than so many of us can ever imagine.

by Anonymous

reply 10

03/02/2013

SEATTLE — Two activists jailed for refusing to cooperate in a federal grand jury investigation of anarchists in the Pacific Northwest were released from prison Thursday after a judge ruled there was little chance they would change their minds.

The detainees, Matthew Duran and Katherine Olejnik, were freed from a detention center south of here where they had been held for more than five months, mostly in solitary confinement. Officials had hoped to pressure them to testify about suspected anarchists believed to have vandalized a federal appeals courthouse in Seattle during May Day demonstrations last year.

The pair have been the subject of public demonstrations and an appeal by the Seattle Human Rights Commission, which this month argued that holding them isolated for 23 hours a day with little human contact could cause permanent psychological injury.

"We're glad that they're out of prison. They shouldn't have been there in the first place," said Kristian Williams, a spokesman for the Committee Against Political Repression. Williams represents one of dozens of groups that accused the Justice Department of targeting political movements in its investigation into anarchist-inspired property damage during recent anti-corporate demonstrations.

"Nobody talks, everybody walks," became the slogan in social media posts demanding an end to civil contempt incarcerations targeting direct-action protests.

by Anonymous

reply 11

03/02/2013

L.A has a new trick used recently on Occupy activists. Arrest them for no reason. Offer them a low plea. If they don't plea in one year, get them sent to L.A's mental health court. Have a Judge Samantha Jessner there to declare them incompetent. End of story. No embarrassing loss at trial and a fully discredited defendant who can't sue for civil rights violations.

Recently, a Melissa Balin kept fighting despite being rendered "incompetent" by these corrupted courts. After one session with a court ordered psychologist, Sabrina Di Biaggion, she was found competent. Why? Too much internet attention and court support.Balin has no history of any mental illness but that is insignificant to judges like Jessner. Jessner's mother was the first female head of the CA BAR, Patricia Phillips, and her husband is a big federal prosecutor. Balin's case was dismissed a month later since there was no way they could have a trial, considering there was no crime and no evidence of a crime. They tried to lock her away in a hospital for the insane though. That's what the tax payer in L.A is paying for. This was not an isolated case.

by Anonymous

reply 12

03/03/2013

[quote]I can't beleve they deliberated for hours.

This is often a function of when deliberations begin. Often, juries do not like to reach resolution BEFORE they are fed the free lunch that accompanies deliberations.

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